(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a document processing apparatus, and more specifically to a document processing apparatus which can form a logical document architecture with respect to chapters, itemized statements, paragraphs, etc. of a document.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
In general, a document is divided into a plurality of blocks, and headings are assigned to the respective blocks to facilitate reading of the document. Further, each block is divided into subblocks, and subheadings are assigned to the respective subblocks. The headings and subheadings are composed of short sentences, and additionally heading symbols are often added to these introductory portions, for instance, such as "Chapter 1" or "Section 3", respectively. When documents having the hierarchical structure as described above are processed by a computer, the following problem arises: In the conventional document processing systems, since document data are processed in units of frames on the display or of pages of printing sheets, where a given chapter is required to be replaced with another, both the start and end positions of the document data to be moved elsewhere should be designated by the cursor. In this case, if the document data of the any given chapter is long, the display screen must be scrolled many times from the start position to the end position to be designated. The above screen scrolling is troublesome and tends to result in operational errors.
When an operator drafts a document, he often wishes to see the previous sentences, for instance, to check the contents of the previous sentences and the kinds of the previous heading symbols. In this case, he must guess the page and the position of the line which include the required sentence and heading symbol to be checked, and thereafter must search the desired sentence and heading symbol. The above search operation is troublesome and therefore the document drafting efficiency is greatly degraded.
To solve the above-mentioned problem, the same applicant and the same inventors have already filed a novel document processing apparatus which comprises document data inputting means; heading dictionary means; heading rule dictionary means; heading deciding means; document architecture rule dictionary means; and document architecture deciding means.
The above document processing apparatus can prepare a logical document hierarchical architecture list by handling documents in units of items in order that the operator can readily designate any given headings, itemized statements, paragraphs for easy document editing.
In the above document processing apparatus, however, since document architecture is decided in accordance with only the document architecture dictionary, there exists a problem such that heading is decided erroneously. For instance, a heading "2.2 Class Training" can be decided as an addition of "2.2" (Heading Symbol) and "Class Training" (Heading Word) or of "2" (Heading Symbol) and "2 class Training" (Heading Word). Further, where itemized statement of "1 . . . ", "2 . . . ", "3 . . . ", and "4 . . . " exist under a chapter heading "4 . . . " and further "5 . . . " follows, the "5 . . . " can be decided as a chapter heading or an itemized heading.
Therefore, when the document architecture univocally decided by the computer is different from that intended by the user, the user should modifly the document architecture to an intended one, thus resulting in maloperability.